2013 British Grand Prix

Pirelli have issued a further statement from motorsport director Paul Hembery denying the tyre supplier is ‘attacking’ anyone over the tyre failures which occured during the British Grand Prix.

“Contrary to the impression that some people have formed, I would like to underline the collaboration and support that we are receiving from the teams, drivers, FIA and FOM,” said Hembery in a statement.

“In no way are we intending to create arguments or attack anybody. We have taken our responsibilities upon ourselves as our press release indicates.

“But not having full control over all the elements that impact on the use of the tyres, we need everybody?óÔé¼Ôäós contribution. With regard to this, we are receiving the full support of all the parties involved, for which we are very grateful.”

22 comments on Hembery: Pirelli “not trying to attack anybody”

I still maintain it is Pirelli’s responsibility to decide what their safe minimum tolerances are with regards to tyre pressures and camber – the F1 teams will always push the limits. So although it may have contributed that was Pirelli’s issue to resolve.

What? So you want to see a Pirelli technician hovering over the shoulders of everybody in the pit lane with a tyre air hose to make sure the tyres are always inflated to a minimum pressure? Yeah, right! Sorry, but Pirelli’s responsibilities stop when they hand the tyres over to the teams. If the teams want to explore performance characteristics that the tyre may deliver outside their design specification, then it’s the team managers who should explain to the drivers why 3 kg of flying rubber just smashed into their car at 180 mph, not Pirelli.

Bottom line is we havnt seen these sorts of delaminations happening before this season, and in these numbers. So something in the way Pirelli has changes its construction for this year is causing the problems we’ve seen.

When a team is running overly agressive camber, this is visible to the naked eye, we saw it at Spa a couple of years back with RB pushing camber limits, they were told by Pirelli not to push beyond a certin limit and RB rode that limit, the tyre acted in a consistent enough manner that they could see when it was going to far without it just suddenly exploding on them.

@russell yes. There surely is an operating window. Everything has limits. You cannot go over 18k rpm, and you shouldn’t go below a certain pressure, above certain degree in camber, and so on.

Technology has it’s limits. Everything is designed to work in one specific way, or a range of ways. Out of that, it’s anyone’s guess, and it’s a risk you’re willing to take if you decide to go that way.

@vettel1 I can’t imagine Pirelli doesn’t already do that. However, they do not have the authority to make the teams do anything. They can only make recommendations, and it’s up to the teams to decide what to do with those recommendations.

I do think there ought to be some rules about tyre usage. Like running tyres the other way around doesn’t sound like such a good idea, or to use an extreme camber. But the FIA should enforce such rules, Pirelli cannot do that.

If all this was caused souly by teams agressive setups, there is a very simple solution, and thats for the FIA to enforce certin limits. Given that this simple solution hasnt happend, and Pirelli are scrambling to find a solution within a week to the next GP, and beyong, im guessing those ‘in the know’ know the root of the problem is not car setup.

The problem is a combination of agressive design by Pirelli, and Pirelli under estimating how much downforce teams where going to gain from ’12 to ’13 season.

Pirelli have known for some time that teams have been running low tyre pressures, High camber & swapping the tyres round & they have said nothing about any of these practices.

Also Pirelli will know full well what settings every team is running with regards to things like camber & tyre pressures because they have tyre engineer’s embedded in every team monitoring everything the teams are doing with regards to tyres.

If Pirelli felt teams were ignoring there advice on any of these things, They could easily come out & say it as they did after Spa 2011. The fact they didn’t suggests that they themselfs believed there was no concern over camber, low PSI or swapping the tyres.

Isn’t that also what Pirelli mentions in their statement – that no one had anticipated that the tyre swapping, or the pressures used or the very high camber, would present safety issues. Not the teams but neither Pirelli itself had anything against it before this.

Feel bad for Hembery, he takes alot of flak every week, atleast from someone who isnt happy with the outcome of a weekend. Ok, last weekend its deserved, but who’d like to be in his shoes every week? :]

They have been in all the possible headlines in the past 8 week atleast. Yeah, it must have been crazy for the entire team.. not just Paul H. It wasn’t a coincidence that the FOM camera focussed on a Pirelli engineer when Felipe’s tyre failed.

Although these are not linked… not sure how this will impact the credibility of Pirelli’s road car.

@jeff1s More like he was “attacking” the FIA (for it is them who homologate the kerb design) and teams, which in my opinion he has every right to do. Pirelli tried to fix the issue (sure, a issue they created themselves, but at least they came up with a fix) and a few teams vetoed it. It’s about time everyone stop pointing their finger solely at Pirelli and realise that almost every party is this mess has almost equal responsibility.

“Itâ€™s about time everyone stop pointing their finger solely at Pirelli”

Why? Everything thats happened with tyres in 2013 has been purely down to the fact Pirelli completely changed the tyres, Softer compounds, different construction of the sidewalls, the steel belt & the bonding process.
If they had stuck with tried & tested compounds & construction we almost certainly would have had zero problems with tyres in 2013.

The fact they are going back to the 2012 construction speaks volumes of where the real problems are, Solely at the feet of Pirelli who went way too aggressive with there 2013 tyres, That has been obvious all year.

Since the start of 2012 there tires have affected the racing in a negative way, This year way more than the last 2 seasons.
Early 2012 was a lottery depending on who happened to get the tyres working & who didn’t & 2013 has been all about tyres be it tyre management killing the racing, Delaminations, illegal tire test’s giving 1 team a big advantage & the farce that was silverstone.

In 2011 Pirelli made decent tires, in 2012 they went a bit too far & in 2013 they took things way too extreme, That can only be Pirelli’s responsibility.

Neither me, Anyone in my family nor the friends I have who follow F1 will ever buy Pirelli tires again!

This just shows what happens when you put ‘the show’ ahead of racing! F1 is the pinnacle no more, Its tires certainly are not at least!

The FIA and the teams wanted Pirelli to make less durable tires that would require 2-3 stops. With cars being developed each year and their understanding of the tires improving with each race it’s impossible to keep the same specification tires year after year and still have 2-3 stops per race. Add to that that there’s hardly any testing and that Pirelli has only an old car to test with, what do you expect? Pirelli is limited by factors outside of their reach and can’t be held as the only responsibly party in this.
To use F1 as the deciding factor for what road tires to use is just silly. Should you also avoid Toyota because they weren’t successful in F1?

I do think Pirelli hold some responsibility because I think its pretty clear that the changes they made to the tyres for this year contributed to a lot of the problems we have seen through 2013.
The low PSI, High camber, Tyre swapping & driving over kurbs may well have all helped cause the problems at Silverstone, However these are all things that teams have been doing for years without serious issue so the tyres surely should be designed with tolerances to withstand these things.

Its been clear all season that Pirelli were too aggressive with the 2013 tyres in the pursuit of ‘spicing up the show’ (Which I don’t blame Pirelli for BTW since they were asked to do this).

Something I do however blame Pirelli for is not doing what was necessary to sort the tyres out sooner. If they had just admitted there were safety concerns with the tyres they could have made the changes already without needing the teams agreement.
They put company PR above the good of the sport in that instance & this prolonged the problems.

Something else I want to put out there is where this leaves the High-Deg tyre mandate.
When your constantly having to change tyre compound/construction to challenge the teams & ‘artificially’ spice up the show there was always the risk of eventually going too far.
The question now is do we continue down that path & risk repeating in the future, Or do we go back to better tyres that are not totally changed every year?

Clearly, Pirelli is not so good at their own tyre as Michelin and Bridgestone. I remember 2011 Spa when Red Bull was in danger of tyre failure. The reason they used heavy camber was there was no rule, just soft guidance from Pirelli.

Let’s not forget that the reason the teams are running the tyres in such unusual ways in the first place, is to try and get around the problems deliberately built into the tyres by Pirelli in the first place. If they weren’t having to be so compromised in the first place, there wouldn’t be any reason for the teams to have to do this. It’s not pointing the finger at Pirelli here, as they were simply trying to do what they were asked to in the first place, in circumstances which are far from ideal. Yet you can’t help but feel that someone should have realised that if you put an F1 team into a compromised position, they will try virtually anything to get around that, which may include running the tyres in a way they weren’t intended.

here is something interesting. in pirelli’s pre-season press release, paul hembrey said taht the 2013 tyres had lost some of there ability to withstand the lateral cornering force & that the tyres needed to be reinforced (hence the steel belt).

he also admitted that this would make tyres more rigid & stop tyre deformation under high cornering forces but that this would cause heat spikes which in turn would increase thermal degredation & could see tyres more prone to overheating.